$2 DIY birthday gift

$2 DIY birthday gift

It certainly has been an emotional few days here- thank you to everyone for kind thoughts and words. Your prayers are much appreciated.  And a busy few days too! That Guy and I have made arrangements to fly out to be in attendance for my mothers Celebration of Life service.  Obviously we had been praying for her recovery so all arrangements have been made very last minute.    But since I am going all the way there I thought it would be wise for me to bring all the Christmas gifts with me which I would have otherwise had to ship.  Only problem? They were not all done.

This is actually a birthday gift I made for my nephew who will be turning 3 on New Years Eve- he's so awesome everyone lights fireworks on his birthday! :)

I decided to make him a felt fishing set.

I made him six magnetic fish, one magnetic fishing pole and a length of blue fabric for the water.

For this project I used:
- scarps of craft felt in a variety of colours - on hand
- this sites fish template
- 2 packages of round magnets - $1 each package = $2
- hot glue gun and sticks
- scissors
- wooden dowel - on hand
- length of kitchen twine - on hand
- piece of blue fabric - on hand
- fabric paint - on hand



First I started by cutting out the fish template then using the template to cut the craft felt.  Be sure to cut two of the body pieces.  I did this by folding over my felt so I only had to make the cut once.

Fish template

 Still using the template I cut the top fin, bottom fin, tail detail and the "mouth".  The mouth is not on the fish template but I just cut a simple heart shape.

All the fishy bits

 Brightly coloured fish all dry fit together to make sure I had all my pieces before I started with the hot glue.

Love the fun colours

 One of your body pieces will become the "top".  To that glue the tail detail then set aside.  To the bottom glue your fins and mouth.

All glued down

 Next, using hot glue, add the magnet to the center of the bottom body piece.  The magnets I bought at the dollar store had one side that reacted to another magnet and one side that did not.   The non reacting side is the one I glued. The "active" side is up.    The first attempt at these had me stuff a small amount of polyester fiberfill inside the body at this stage to make him softer and puffier. However, my magnets were not strong enough to react to pull through the fiberfill and craft felt.  

Glue down your magnet

 So I just glued to top of the body to the bottom.  Then using black and white fabric paint I added the eyes.  This could just as easily be done with more craft felt but I am exceptionally terrible at cutting circles.

Let those eyes dry thoroughly

 Then I took my dowel and generously applied hot glue to the end.  While the glue was still hot I tightly wrapped kitchen twine around the dowel leaving a length hanging off the end.

kitchen twine + dowel = fishing rod

At the end of my loose twine I created a magnet sandwich with hot glue and the raw twine end right in the middle. I thought I was done with the fishing rod here.   But then I  tested it out.  Because of the way the magnet sandwich hung I was getting very little surface area of the active sides of the magnets, which means it was doing a less than stellar job at picking up those felt fish.  

magnet sandwich

 That Guy had the idea that I glue an additional magnet flat on the ends.  Worked great!

Another magnet glued to the end

 Taa-daa!!  Gift set all done! To wrap it I actually rolled everything up in the blue fabric and tied it at either end with ribbon, no need for wrapping paper.

finished gift

I sure hope my nephew enjoys this!